Course Goals

Students will learn the importance of human-centered interface design and apply it to their own design work. Specifically, students will:

• read and research the work of influential writers in the field of human-centered interface design
• learn key principles of effective, goal-driven interface design
• learn how human-centered design can be used to solve usability problems for a variety of interface types.
• become familiar with all stages of the human-centered, iterative design process.

Course Outcomes

To demonstrate mastery of the course goals, students will do the following:

• analyze a variety of software, product, and website interfaces to determine why some designs succeed and others fail
• synthesize the writings of established usability and interface design experts and discuss how these findings can be applied to their own designs
• create interface designs that address common usability problems
• complete a design project that follows each step of the human-centered, iterative design cycle—from user needs analysis, to concepting and prototyping, to usability testing, to revision.